Manual Meetings
Capturing both sides of the call
Why recording the other participants is separate from recording your microphone, and what Neato Echo does and doesn't capture.
A meeting recording has two halves: your voice, from your microphone, and everyone else's, from what your PC is playing. They're captured by different means and they can fail independently — which is why a recording sometimes contains only you.
What Neato Echo captures
Your microphone, and system audio — the sound your PC plays. Together those cover both sides of a call.
What it does not do:
- It never joins the meeting as a bot. Nobody sees an extra participant, and there's nothing for a host to admit.
- It never records your screen. Only the audio is taken.
- It doesn't need the meeting platform's own recording to be running, and it doesn't ask the host for permission.
How system audio is captured
There's no permission to grant. A small audio helper bundled with Neato Echo captures what your PC is playing, so the other side of the call is picked up without any prompt from Windows. It needs Windows 10 version 2004 or later; Windows 11 is fine.
The step-by-step for when it fails is in meeting audio isn't captured.
Echo, and why you don't hear yourself twice
Your microphone picks up your speakers as well as your voice, so a naive recording captures everyone else twice — once from system audio, once bleeding back through your mic. Neato Echo runs echo cancellation to remove that bleed, and drops duplicated phrases when merging the two sources.
You don't need to configure this. It's worth knowing because it explains why a transcript doesn't repeat every sentence, and why using headphones — which removes the bleed at source — tends to give the cleanest result.
Recording only your own side
If system audio isn't available, recording still works; you just get your half. That's a legitimate way to work if you only need your own contributions, and speaker labels will fall back to "You" and "Them".
Telling people you're recording
Recording laws vary by country and state, and some require the consent of everyone on the call rather than just you. Neato Echo doesn't announce itself to other participants, so whether and how to tell them is your call to make.
Related
Still need help?
Write to [email protected] with your Windows version, your Neato Echo version (Settings → System), and what you were doing. A person reads every message.